Disappeared: MANTEQUERO BOOK 2

by Jenny Twist

  Later, all three supplied with drinks and seated round the table, he filled them in on what he’d found out so far. “Definitely no reports of any disappearance or suspicious circumstances to the local police. I have a mate in the policia local and he’s made discreet enquiries.

  I went up to Caserones again during the day a few days ago and all is quiet and apparently normal, but I still had that feeling of being watched. It felt like -” He broke off.

  “My parents were in Amsterdam during the war, under Nazi occupation, and they said that everything looked normal but the people lived in constant fear – not just of the Nazis, but of their own friends and neighbours. You had to watch what you said all the time, in case someone reported you to the Germans. People only ventured out when they had to and then they hurried home, looking over their shoulders. At night they slept badly, waiting for the knock on the door.” He looked up at the sky, his eyes crinkling against the bright sunlight. “I didn’t expect to get that same feeling in a little Spanish mountain village.” He looked down again at his hands grasping a huge litre pot of beer, then picked it up and drank the contents in one go. “But that’s how it felt. They were all waiting for the knock on the door.”

  He gave the two young women a watery smile. “You are determined to do this?” Both nodded. “Then I would warn you to be careful. Whatever it is they are afraid of, take it seriously. Your friend disappeared and we don’t know why.” He called to the waiter to refill their glasses, then bent forward so their heads were all close together over the table. “I have a chalet ready for you at my place. If there is any trouble, anything at all, don’t hesitate. Come straight to me.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. “Here are the directions and my telephone number. You are in number eight, OK?”

  Alison’s eyes filled with tears. “You are very kind, Johan,” she said, struggling to keep her voice under control. Her lips seemed to have gone numb.

  Heather took the paper and gripped Johan’s hand.

  “You’re a good friend, Johan,” she said.

  ****

  Alison slept for the entire journey and was still asleep when Heather pulled up beside a very large house, right at the very top of the village. She got out and looked back down the way they had come. The road had indeed been considerably worse than the main road up. There were no barriers at all and the tarmac was cracked and patched up with concrete here and there. The village itself had cobbled streets, mostly too narrow to admit a car, and she had had to follow the agent’s directions very carefully to find the way through. Even so, she misgave in a couple of places, convinced the car was wider than the street. But she had made it and felt rather pleased with herself as she walked up to a heavy wooden door and knocked.

  A small, frail woman with wispy hair and a worried expression came to the door and smiled tentatively when she saw Heather. “Miss Jones?”

  Heather nodded and smiled. “And that’s Miss Metcalfe in the car. She fell asleep on the way. She has a very tiring job.” Behind her back, Heather had her fingers tightly crossed, hoping Alison wouldn’t wake up and make it obvious she was drunk before she got rid of the landlady.

  “The house is next door, here. It was all one, but I had this part converted to a separate house and if the rental thing works out, I can do at least one more. It’s an enormous house.”

  Luckily, the woman didn’t take long to show Heather round and then she shook hands and said, “I’ll have to go now. I’ve got a lot to do. But I’m right next door if you need me.”

  With a sigh of relief, Heather headed back to the car, checked that the landlady was safely back behind her huge door, and went to get Alison into the house.

  “Wha - what?” Alison looked around her, completely confused. “Shush,” Heather said. “Just get in the house and I’ll sort everything out.”

  Once inside, she handed Alison two ibuprofen tablets and a pint of water and said, “Here, take these. And drink the water – all of it. I’ll make you something to eat.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Alison mumbled.

  “I don’t care,” Heather said. “You must eat something or you’ll feel like hell when you wake up.”

  “Wake up?”

  “Yes. You’re going to eat this and then you’re going to have a siesta before we go out on the town.”

  Alison looked at the huge baguette that Heather had placed in front of her, along with about two pounds of cheese and some spreadable margarine.

  “I couldn’t get butter,” Heather explained. “It was margarine or nothing.”

  “When did you go shopping?”

  “I knew you were going to have to eat something, so I left you with Johan and went to the minimarket in Orgiva.”

  Alison had a vague recollection of sitting at a café table with a tall man with grey hair who kept trying to feed her sardines, or maybe it was anchovies.

  “Didn’t we eat at the bar?” she mumbled.

  “I did. And Johan did. But you refused to eat anything. They were really nice tapas too.” She smiled reflectively. “And they were free here, too. I thought you said it was only in Granada.”

  “Granada Province,” Alison said, thickly. “Not just the city.”

  “Oh, right,” Heather said, cutting herself a generous chunk of bread, lathering it with margarine and adding a healthy portion of cheese. “Brilliant.”

  ****

  When she woke up the first thing she saw were pink mountains. Not an alcohol-induced hallucination, she decided, but the dawn light.

  “Oh my God!” she cried, sitting up in bed. “I must have slept right through. I’ve wasted a whole day.”

  The door opened a crack and Heather’s face appeared. “It’s all right,” she said. “It’s only seven o’clock. In the evening,” she added. “I’m making coffee. Do you want some?”

  The smell of real coffee came floating up the stairs. “Oh yes, please,” Alison cried, leaping out of bed, surprised to find she was still wearing the clothes she had travelled in.

  On reflection, she was also surprised to find she felt neither drunk nor hung-over.

  “I feel all right,” she said, over a mug of steaming coffee.

  “Hangover preventative,” Heather said. “One of the many benefits of living with an alcoholic. You learn how to deal with its effects.”

  “You live with an alcoholic?” Alison suddenly realised she knew nothing about Heather’s private life.

  “Used to. He’s dead now. Alcoholic liver.” Heather smiled. “He died happy, though.”

  “How awful for you,” Alison said.

  “Awful that he was an alcoholic, or awful that he died?”

  “Well, I meant the alcoholic bit really, but of course, both things are awful.”

  “Yeah,” Heather said, taking a sip of her coffee and following it up with some sort of cake. “It was hard work while it lasted, but it didn’t last very long, and when he died I was devastated.” A slow tear trickled down her cheek.

  “I’m so sorry:” Alison leaned over and gave her friend an impulsive hug.

  “I didn’t used to be this fat.” Heather looked down at her enormous tummy, hardly disguised at all by the loose top she was wearing. “Comfort eating. Only, after a while it doesn’t feel very comfortable.”

  She wiped her eyes on the back of her hand and picked up another cake. “I just can’t seem to get out of the habit somehow.”

  “Come on,” Alison said, draining her coffee cup and standing up from the table. “Let’s put our glad rags on and hit the town.”

  Heather gave her a wan smile.

  ****

  It was cold outside now the sun had gone down and they wrapped themselves in fleeces before tottering down the uneven cobbled street to the plaza. The door to the bar stood wide open, despite the chill of the evening and what few customers there were were wearing heavy overcoats and clustered round a wood burning stove in the corner, playing dominoes.

  There was a huge man behind the ba
r. He would have been tall for an Englishman. For a Spaniard he was a giant. He turned, with the beginning of a smile on his face, and then his expression changed as he saw who was coming in. The people gathered round the stove all turned at once and stared at the two girls. A feeling of hostility fairly radiated off them. Alison understood completely Johan’s Wild West analogy. She felt Heather stiffen beside her. Then she plastered a smile on her face and marched up to the bar.

  “Hello,” she said. “I’m Alison and this is my friend Heather. We’re from England.” All eyes swivelled to Heather and seemed, if anything, to become even more unfriendly. One old chap actually made the sign to ward off the evil eye.

  Undeterred, Alison beamed at them, then turned her attention back to the enormous barman. “Two glasses of house red, please.”

  The barman nodded and turned to get the glasses. The old men round the stove were still mumbling. Alison strained to hear what they were saying, but the only snippet she could pick up was, “The fat one should not have come. She will call him.”

  Call who? Hadn’t Johan said something about the Englishwoman calling him? She couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said. Something about a grocer. She’d meant to look it up and forgot.

  The girls took their drinks to a table as near the stove as they could get and engaged in idle chatter whilst Alison tried to listen to the conversation at the next table.

  “What are they saying?” Heather whispered.

  “Nothing I can understand,” Alison lied. It didn’t seem very politic to repeat what she’d heard about the fat one. “Just keep chattering away and I’ll try and tune in.”

  It was easier than she had thought. The accent wasn’t that difficult, once you got your ear in. At first they said very little as they continued their game of dominoes. There were occasional cries of, “Oh, no, I didn’t see that coming”, “Can’t follow that”, “You sly bastard. I know what you’re up to.” Exactly the same, in fact, as the listening to old men playing dominoes in an English pub.

  The barman came over with a plate of tapas – pickled anchovies and olives with slices of bread. “Thank you,” said Alison, giving him her sweetest smile. He almost smiled back, but caught himself just in time. He’s a natural smiler, Alison thought, a nice, friendly man. He’s just really worried about something. Or afraid. I think he’s afraid.

  The conversation at the next table was beginning to get interesting and she found she could understand most of it.

  “I told him to make sure he locked all the doors and windows and not to invite anyone in, even if he knows them.”

  “That’s not true about he has to be invited. My granny told me about her sister who was got by the grocer and she never invited him. He just came.”

  The word he used for grocer was ‘mantequero’ which meant someone who purveyed fat. As he said it, she heard a distant penny drop. I’ve come across this in a different context. But whatever it was, she couldn’t remember it and she went back to concentrating on what they were saying.

  Heather was being very patient. Alison wanted to translate for her, but she was afraid she might miss something whilst she was doing so.

  “He likes the fat ones, that’s what they say, and by God that woman was fat. I’ve never seen anyone that fat in my life before.”

  “My aunt Carmen was nearly as fat,” one of them remarked. “and he never came for her.”

  “Yes, but she was very old and stank of wee. Even the mantequero would be put off.”

  There was an outburst of laughter and Alison found herself joining in. It stopped immediately and they turned to stare at her.

  “I also had a very fat aunt who stank of wee,” she said. This was only partly true. Her aunt hadn’t been very fat. “It was worse when she sat by the fire.”

  At this they all burst out laughing again, Alison included.

  Unable to contain herself any longer, Heather grabbed Alison’s arm. “What did you say?” she demanded.

  This time Alison did stop to interpret and Heather laughed as well. The old man with the fat aunt lifted his hand to the barman and ordered more drinks. When they came there was more wine for Alison and Heather as well. And more tapas. In no time the conversation had turned to searching questions about the girls. Where did they live? How old were they? What did they do for a living? Why had they chosen to visit their village in February?

  Alison answered as best she could, except for the last one, of course. She said it was a holiday for schools in England and she felt she needed to brush up on her Spanish.

  After a while, the barman, who was called Rafa, Alison discovered, came to join them, bringing with him a whole carafe of wine and a huge plate of bread, cheese and ham, which Heather attacked with gusto.

  The evening began to settle into an atmosphere of almost maudlin’ bonhomie - one old chap leapt to his feet and burst into a particularly mournful flamenco song and the rest clapped and stamped their feet. Alison joined in with the rest of them, although she wasn’t particularly fond of flamenco singing, preferring the guitar playing and dancing.

  It was several hours later when somebody said he’d better be going and that seemed to act as a signal for the rest of them. People reluctantly scraped their chairs away from the table and got up to leave, pulling their coat collars up against the cold night air.

  “Wait a minute,” Rafa said, “Who is going to the top barrio? You, José, and you, Paco. You’d better walk these girls home.”

  “No, really, we’re all right,” Alison protested, but Rafa silenced her. “Nobody is all right,” he said, “and especially not your fat friend. Get her indoors and make sure you lock all the windows and doors. And do not open them for anyone, anyone at all, until the sun comes up.”

  Alison felt a thrill of fear. These are just superstitious peasants, she told herself. There’s nothing to be afraid of. But, even so, as they walked back up the street, accompanied by the reluctant José and Paco, she found herself looking over her shoulder all the time and seeing things in the shadows. There was very little street lighting and it was easy to imagine things flitting about just on the edge of her vision. Twice she thought she saw a young man with a wide-brimmed hat, carrying a bag. But when she looked again there was nothing there.

  She kept hearing things as well. A man’s voice calling, “Juno, where are you? Beautiful, my beautiful goddess, where are you?”

  And over and over again, “Beautiful, so beautiful.”

  She was glad when they got to the house and she bid goodnight to their reluctant chaperones and closed the door on the disturbing night.

  IV

  Alison slept fitfully. She kept thinking she could hear someone scrabbling at the window and once or twice she was convinced she saw a face peering in. It’s my imagination, she told herself - a tree outside with its branches rubbing against the glass. Moonlight in the branches forming a pattern that looks like a face. But she didn’t – quite – believe it.

  The older part of her brain, the part that knew nothing of logic, knew there was someone out there trying to get in - someone scratching on the window-pane. And, right on the edge of her hearing, she could hear a voice calling, “Let me in, Juno. Let me in.”

  By the small hours she had reached such a state of panic that she was ready to run from the room. She lay on the bed, filled with pent-up energy and fired up ready to go. She had a vivid memory of lying in her room as a child, knowing that something was under the bed and that if she could just get to her parents’ room she would be safe. But it was a long way across to the bedroom door and it would catch her before she could escape.

  She felt like that now. If she could just get to Heather’s room, be with another human being, everything would be all right.

  She tried to persuade herself that she stayed where she was because of her iron will and strength of character, but really it was because she suspected that whatever it was out there had already got into the room, was waiting for her to move, waiting to pounce.
<
br />   When she finally slept, it was to dream of running down dark, cobbled, twisting streets, pursued by a man wearing a big hat, calling after her. “Hello, Beautiful. Hola, Guapa.”

  Waking to a gloriously sunny day, she felt vaguely ridiculous. She had allowed the old men in the bar to spook her with their silly superstitions. What was the matter with her? “Grow up, Alison,” she told herself in her sternest teacher’s voice. “Get a grip.”

  Flinging off the covers, she went over to the window, opened it wide and breathed in the wonderful mountain air. She looked down below the balcony at the dizzying drop to the ravine below. The house was built right on the edge! She hadn’t noticed that yesterday. Feeling slightly vertiginous, she withdrew her head. Well, so much for something scratching at her window. Nothing could get up this high. This was followed closely by the troubling thought that there were no trees either. No branches to brush across the glass or cast face-like shadows.

  Pulling on her dressing gown, she slipped across the corridor and knocked on Heather’s door. “Are you awake? It’s a beautiful day out there.” A sleepy voice said, “Come in.”

  She pushed the door open. Heather had her back to her - a vast bulk under the covers.

  “Come on, wake up,” Alison cried, going over and giving her a shake. “Seize the day!”

  Heather rolled over and stretched. “God, I had the most amazing dream. I dreamt I saw a face at the window, a beautiful young man, and he was calling to me - Let me in - over and over again. So I got up and opened the window and he took me in his arms and kissed me. And I was so slim, Alison. Just like I used to be before – you know.” Her face was flushed with happiness.

  Alison felt her eyes being drawn to the balcony window. The curtains were fluttering in the slight morning breeze.

  “Your window’s open.”

  Heather sat up in bed and stared at the window. “How odd! I could have sworn I locked it last night.”

  So could Alison. After Rafa’s admonitions the night before and the spooky walk up to the house, she had become so paranoid she’d checked every single door and window in the house, including the tiny bathroom windows and the little vent in the boiler room, before she went to bed.